Category Archives: Story

Warsaw, 1812 Before Warsaw, I had spent days inventing myself as a pianist. Tailoring my biography, imagining what could happen in my possible lives. Love, perhaps, there was place for love; politics even, for it seemed inevitable. Betraying my kin—and then death—came merely as consequences. # The evening is cold: autumn has taken hold over us already. The train rolls into its final station, accompanied by a grinding screech and thick puffs of steam. People…

Pleadingly Marshall’s innocent. There’s been looting and worse everywhere since the missiles hit, but he’s taken nothing except a jacket he found in an abandoned car. It’s not honor that keeps him from stealing, he’s just scared he’ll screw it up, and then what will Dad say? The man breathed anger even before the day the sky burst into flames, the day Mom didn’t come home. Dad doesn’t yell any more, but Marshall knows the…

The sorcerer wove his beloved out of the finest silks and linens, the poorest of which was fit for any earthly king. Across her neckline and cuffs, he affixed the most delicate lace, threads more slender than spiderwebs, lighter than a lover’s breath. He scoured his Mansion of a Hundred Rooms for bolts of cloth; gifts from fellow sorcerers, from superstitious lords, from the jealous summer fae, from workers of enchantment and loom. These he…

Ahokupe’s wrists jerked as the sennit ropes were tied tight behind him, and he bit his lip against the pain. Forcing his spirit to quiet, he breathed the subtle scents of rotting durian from the surrounding forest and focused his gaze on a parrot in a nearby rambutan tree. If he was to be fed to the God this day, his last thoughts would be a calm lagoon. Before him, the stone path twisted through…

The amusement park was so large that it had two trains named after root vegetables. Vienne got on the wrong one. Lugging her magician’s trunk in one hand and a map of Wonder Gardens in the other, she clambered onto the Rutabaga Express. The seat was sticky with pineapple gunk and the car was open to the sky. As the train chugged past the Bananarama Coaster and the whirling Strawberry Surprise, a sweet scent wafted…

The angels moved up the road towards Gethsemene in a triad formation. If they’d walked, that would have been something. If they’d flown, swooped in from the sky, that would have been something else. But they didn’t. They just moved, floating slowly along the road in unison. Behind them — almost too far away to see — was the unnatural mountain of their home, fading into the skyline. Valeria had gate duty that day. It…